Illin' with the Upstaged Underground
by Quillon42
Summary: This story is set specifically in the Mutant X Universe. Considers an alternate path in which a certain well-known demonic blonde (who did not figure into the Mutant X series per se) barges in to help when Havok, Polaris, and others stumble somewhat. (First character listed below is really a variation on said demonic blonde).


(NB: I explain the "endings" and "(next issue)s" in my Afterword if you want to stick around for it).

ILLIN' WITH THE UPSTAGED UNDERGROUND

By Quillon42

SOMETIME IN 1999 IN AN ALTERNATE SUBTERRANEAN NEW YORK CITY

The subterranean soil underfoot felt so smooth to Madelyne Pryor as her alternate, absolutist pandemonium-possessed person slid abruptly into the impromptu excavation etched out of the earth by the prized pet of the Machine's most malevolent mole-villain.

"MADDY!" cried the mainstream-Machine-dimension-displaced Alex Summers as he saw, now slipping from his vision and into the depths of the darkness below, the parallel-universe iteration of the redhead who aroused him most. All around him, mutants and other species of superheroes and supervillains were slugging it out in an underground expanse, the sought-after objective for either side the securing of the young son of Miss Pryor, for all the immense energy and abilities he contained.

Alex screamed Madelyne's name again as he sprinted to the lip of the monster-made crevasse, and as he did so, a certain fern-follicled frau who was truly the love of his life, most of the time (at least, in an on-again, off-again way in most realities) gave chase to the chasm as well.

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

"Al…er, Havok," started Lorna, as she reached for the brazen blond, constant concussive-plasma donor who was the famed younger Summers. Miss Dane had spent so many summers of her own—too many, she knew full well—under the tutelage and tether of her father Magneto. In this reality, the gorgeous greenhead had never really known love because of it. She wondered sometimes, especially considering her father's attachment to some like Moira MacTaggart—who here had fallen violently in the course of intermutant conflict—if her draconian dad were keeping her sheltered to protect her. Keeping her safe from the pain of heartbreak, or from even more immediate and tangible physical pain that such attachments would bring in the quotidian role of heroing.

At any rate, when Lorna reached the edge of the precipice, Alex was still gaping down into its bowels. Even though she could only see it from the side, the young woman could tell that an ague of anguish had overcome the features of this plasmatic paladin who piqued her interest.

"She's…I can't see her," the shorter-fused Summers brother mused as he strained his gaze ever further into the abyss's reaches.

Lorna hazarded a glance down as well, then reached for the man's shoulder. "Look…I've got the Pademelon nearby—we'll burrow down and see if we can…"

"You have a what?!"

"Oh," the diligent Dane said quickly, forgetting herself a second. "It's a burrowing vehicle; it's named after the Australian marsupial. Geophysics and excavations and…just like going underground generally, it's kind of a hobby for me—when I'm not at my day job of adventuring and almost getting killed all the time."

Alex's face brightened—one of the only times that it had since he came to this other version of the Earth he knew. Up to this moment, he was still too absorbed in Madelyne's abrupt departure to register fully the existence, the pleasant peridot presence of Polaris at his side. He gathered himself to address her, carefully.

"That's me, too! Er…both in terms of enjoying geophysics on the side, as well as making a sort of livelihood from being a hero and literally not letting the work kill me."

"Yeah!..." Lorna was lost a second as she stared into the handsome Summers's sapphire irises. She could gather in the gaze he gave in return a similarly tender sort of attention.

She could feel something weirdly wonderful in that moment; it was almost as if he and she were meant to be, at least in some iteration of this existence. Even if it were not in this life, then in some other parallel permutation.

The mainstream-misplaced Havok, of course, knew better—and by now he was well aware that the Lorna of this reality was likely in the dark about anything ever happening anywhere between the two of them. He wouldn't tell her, of course, as they headed off toward the Pademelon…but seconds after strapping themselves in and the dirt-diving Dane dashed the vehicle's controls into the ON position, Alex's mind whirled back into the events of the past several weeks.

What the sunny-scalped Summers sibling could remember first—as the marbles-minded Governor of Mackiechusetts always made perfectly clear, in umpteen episodes of this alternate reality's relevance-and-necessity-bereft run, was the act of "dying" that Havok perpetrated as his alleged last act on 616 Earth. After confronting on an airplane some frazzled fright named Greystone—who believed he had concocted an interdimensional device, only to have built a bomb in its place—the pair discovered the foe's folly far too late, as said device detonated, doing the 'Stoned one in, but sending the Summers into a universe parallel to and much darker than his own.

In this parallel place, one of the world's greatest hero groupings consisted of six seemingly familiar mutant adventurers. Specifically, this group—dubbed The Six, by way of nothing less than the scintillatingly brilliant cerebrum of the abovementioned Governor—consisted of Brute, who was a still-furry yet literally-green-in-the-gills Henry McCoy, sans his patented intelligence for most of the series; Ice-Man, or "Bob Drake," the Governor again employing inimitable artifice in transforming this hero's codename with a crafty hyphen, so as to untraceably distance this reality's icemaking Original-Fiver from his mainstream counterpart…also having said hero very much freezingly freakish, as here the doings of the deity Loki made Bob unable to control his iciness to a deadly extent; Warren Worthington as the Fallen, or basically what resulted from too much interference by Apocalypse, demonstrating here that the output would be Angel's permanent cosplay as Caliber Comics's The Crow (yes—_that_ Crow, the one Brandon Lee played before he…nevermind), with superfluous firebreathing abilities; Ororo Munroe as Bloodstorm, an iteration of the once-Iquadi overwhelmed by Dracula, able to control vermin, and emitting from her scalp a modification of that goddamned Mohawk hairstyle which will never, ever go away, even though it was only relevant in the Mid-Eighties; Madelyne Pryor as Marvel Woman, who had some psionic reserves to her persona, but this was witnessed for only so many seconds as within the first few issues she changed, in name and in essence, from Graduated-Marvel-Girl to Goblin Queen; and Havok, apparently in the alternate reality (as we only saw so much of Other-Havok here)…the same basically as the genuine article Alex, but supplanted by the latter Summers when a Sentinel shot and slaughtered Other-Alex the second that our Alex appeared in this parallel version of Earth.

Yes, it was all a doozy—and as many who monitored the makings of the Machine could tell a given willing listener—it was all a dud. The apparently diminished capacity of the aforementioned Mackiechusetts Governor took mainstream matters and minutiae, mixed them together, and ended up making much in the way of a morass of manure with them. The serialization of this 616-semblance lasted only a couple of years, but it was still memorably miserable with childish penciling, choppy pacing, and cheesyfuck payoffs that made one wonder why he or she invested in the first eleven segments of a dozen-issue story arc in the first place. It was imbecilic infamy such as this that made the X-Franchise—and all other titles in this universe—take such a sober, brooding turn in the years to come.

But, while we're here in this awful alternate world, we might as well embrace the Ninetiesesque chipper cheapness that it has to offer, if you'll just stick with this author a little longer…

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

Alex, in any case, continued to think about his time here in this bizarre rendition of his reality, and it even struck him too as very strange how cartoonishly campy it all was. This world, with its overwhelming black raptor of the Goblin Force overtaking even that of its incendiary Phoenix peer—with the Goblin Queen here more hovering and hegemonic than even she who in the mainstream milieu crowed constantly that she was life and fire incarnate—even with such sway the lava-maned leviathan was not nearly as viscerally vicious, nor was she as fundamentally frightening as the demonized Madelyne of the Inferno of old. Havok remembered himself bedecked in the tattered, shattered shreds of his costume, his flesh mostly flaunted to the word to match Madelyne's as they stood side by side, somewhat arm in arm, atop a brazen jutting crag of a ledge that used to be some balcony near the top of the Empire State Building. On the agenda was the extermination of infants for the sake of the influx of imps and other demons into Manhattan for all time.

It was sinful; it was sacrilegious. But it was sexy as all hell, and it still made Havok stiffen in a secret place to think of those times. Alex had to admit that he had never experienced quite the rise, in so many ways, that he did in that maligned Madelyne's arms.

Because of that, he thought, it actually made muddling through this other world all the easier. Alex was still struggling, but he found this Maddy easier to resist, with her preposterous pink pants and overdone delivery: "I am the Goblin Queen! HA HA HA HA HA!" Really, at the end of the day—and at the beginning, and all throughout that day as well—the chump in charge of Mackiechusetts was no Governor of Claremontana.

Still, Havok cared for the woman in any iteration…and he quested just as much to cure her as to curtail her evil reign. He had a lot of work in front of him, though; while this parallel Pryor was not quite as viscerally stimulating as she who served as one of the impetuses for Inferno, she was still as potent and as possessed as the one he originally knew. This was reinforced once more in the past hour, Alex reflected the light in Maddy's soul was once again quenched by the Goblin Queen—which in this reality was a separate, possessing entity from Miss Pryor herself—and the lady took to terrorizing everyone from surface to subterranea. Most egregiously, she arranged a deal with Callisto, who led this world's Morlocks as well and who had fancied her most favorable facial features here; specifically the latter lady would reveal the location of some rebels including Havok in exchange for the sparing of her people.

Callisto ended up keeping her end of the bargain by betraying the more impetuous Summers—but the Goblin Regent reneged to an extent, viciously incinerating the Morlock mistress's countenance most callously, and ordering that those existing underground be eliminated entirely.

In the widely-known world wrought by the wayward Governor of Mackiechusetts, Callisto's lover the Mole Man—himself in all realities an imposing individual operating from within the epidermis of the earth—he comforted his cohort with open, loving arms, he protecting her and the rest of his people with a minimum of vindictiveness.

In the permuted alternate to the alternate reality in which the instant narrative lies, on the other hand, the extreme…inflammation of Callisto's features ignited a far more intense indignation within the Fantastic Four's original gangsta of a foe. In a trice the Mole mobilized his most trusted monster and who in this reality was especially fearsome for his potent and sometimes literally inflammatory breath, to rise from his crust-residing rest and wrest the Goblin Queen away from the fray before she could do any more drastic damage to anyone. This the beast did, and soon Goblin gave way to Giganto as this latter, most famous charge of the Mole Man carried her off into the depths of the earth. Its master and his woman followed closely behind on creature-rides on their own, and as established above, Lorna and Alex were now trailing said couple.

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

Minutes later a standoff ensued, in which the maleficent Mole held in one hand an unconscious Madelyne—the lady even with Goblin Force unable to withstand the miserable galeforce breath of Giganto—and in his other hand the seminal stave which basically served as another arm for the mantle-dwelling mastermind.

"Back, mutants!" he cried, glancing over at his prodigious pet, who was primed to breathe all over the Queen in another, much more lethal manner, "you cannot stop me from delivering the deadly and deserved justice to which this…termagant has doomed herself! She sealed her fate the second she scarred my beloved lady…"

And with that, the Mole Man looked ruefully over to Callisto, the terrible sight of whose recently-wrecked looks spurred the villain to shoot a commanding sneer at Giganto, goading the thing on to fire his flame-phlegm at the Goblin Queen, at will…

(SMAQUE)

…when of a sudden, the oversized entity seized up, his features tightening as if impacted from behind, and the titan terror tumbled abruptly to the ground, mewling miserably as his behemoth body unfurled into unconsciousness.

"You will not perpetrate and perpetuate such violence, you substratum schmooze!"

"No, Anaylli…You can't…you won't…!...

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

(WHOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHH)

(SMAQUE)

…And just like that, before the Mole Man could totally take it all in, he was already trounced into an oblivion twinning that of his prized pet. The one would wallop him into lalaland herself landed feet away from Havok and Polaris, the young interloping blonde knocking the Mole on the meninges with a funkily-fabricated stave of her own, then facing the others after satisfying herself that her old nemesis was out cold.

Callisto, interestingly, did not appear concerned at all that her life's love had just lost consciousness. In fact, she looked to the narrative's late entrant as if the latter were the savior she had really been seeking these past several moments.

Indeed, it would turn out to be the fact of the matter. Alex gazed upon the girl and realized that she was someone familiar…as with so many others in this parallel place, it was someone he had met before in the mainstream reality, but who here was distorted to a degree. She was winsome, lithe, blonde; however, he wondered if his id should indulge here, as he was not certain if she was of a certain age after all…

At any rate, Lorna cut off Alex's meandering mindset of amorousness as she addressed the comely newcomer. "Illyana…?" she started.

"Close," the other responded, as she hitched up her own trusty stave in hand. "I am…a sort of skin, which Illyana had shed a while back. Allow me to explain.

"It has been several years since the girl-turned-woman-turned-girl-turned-woman-turned- girl-turned-woman-turned-girl-turned-woman-turned- girl-turned-woman-turned-girl-turned-woman-turned- girl-turned-woman-turned-girl-turned-woman-turned- girl-turned-woman-turned-girl-turned-woman-turned- girl known as Illyana Rasputin has graced this world," she began. "Fed up finally with all the fucking-with-her-age that so many circumstances had foisted upon her—as well as with all the aborted ambushes by Chris Hanson and his crew, upon the latter's ever-tardy discoveries that the lady was legal to date once again, whenever she wished to engage in a romantic rendezvous—Magik decided to depart from this plane for good, for place where age was not such a factor for her. Even in an effing floating timeline such as this and so many other Machine realities, Illyana always had trouble having the time of her life, when such time was never on her side."

One could create a quilt from the knitting of her listener's brows as they tried to swim the Mediterranean of mixed metaphors that this fantastic female was flinging at them. She went on.

"Upon her solitary exodus from our reality—a reality which I'm well aware, Alex, you are a bit of a Havok-Come-Lately…" And at this Alex blenched, he looking to Lorna bewildered, as it seemed that in time everyone knew of the man's other-universe-asylee status. "My sourceceress, the body from which I emanated, she found the peace and prosperity for which she had been clamoring so calamitously.

"And now you effers are just stuck with little old me. But again, who am I: the poser persists.

"Ills decided that she didn't need a dark side on leaving here, so chanting the appropriate incantation, she took her Soulsword and committed a seppuku of sorts. But rather than just disembowel her, as any ordinary blade would, the Sword divided her between the lighter side of the lady, which has long since of course left…and the much darker, baser, pain-in-the-ass part of her, the one with the horns."

"So you're just…Darkchilde, then?" asked Lorna, the green gal having heard of Illyana's legend through Peter while the latter was still alive.

"That's right. I'm the oscuro to her chiaro. Think Danny DeVito from _Twins_, except I'm the part that's all the shadow, instead of the part that's all the shit."

Alex, Lorna, and Callisto, none of them having seen _Twins_ (along with basically nine out of ten readers, such that this author could consider seppuku himself for making yet another dastardly dated reference), despite their funkily-floating-timelined lives, responded only with visages tres vacant.

"Well…Darkchilde," said Alex, "it has been good meeting you, but Madelyne and…"

"No, we're not done here."

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

This met with some more frazzled faces (with the Morlock mistress's own mug in particular looking frazzled, as well as many other words beginning with F). "I have yet to regale you with the remainder of my origin…and your little mordant-hued Madness over there's going to require some of my own…hands-on holistic healing."

Before Alex or Lorna could do anything, the barging-in blonde set off toward the unconscious, supine form of Madelyne Pryor. The heroes took a step toward the replicated Rasputin only to be cut off by a sharp hand motion from Callisto.

"No," she managed, by way of her toasted tongue. "The girl knows what she is doing. Have faith."

"I was found by two of Cal's Morlocks, discovered in fact in a state of infancy," the bold blonde continued, as she hovered over Madelyne's body, the former steadying her stave over the latter. "Annalee and Masque, they played my mom and dad more or less, took good care of my new-born-again ass. Helped me get onto my feet, and even fitted me with a new and apropos identity, appropriate for my upbringing and abilities."

The stick the girl brandished began to hum and grow warm in her hands. "I found I wasn't situated with a sword, as was the case with my sourceress, but rather with a stave. It helped me channel my new talents of being able to heal or harm, in accordance with what the given predicament called for. In tandem honor of the woman from whom the Morlocks knew I originated, as well as the foster mother who raised me, I was christened 'Anaylli,' which sounds like 'Annalee' and is incidentally 'Illyana' spelled backwards…"

Alex and Lorna looked at each other once again.

"Yes, yes, just like 'Alucard' is the reverse of that loony and miserable literary and movie monster who plagues our world ever so ubiquitously and amateuristically…real inspired, imaginative muscles in that old mind, Mr. Mackiechusetts!"

The stave was almost ready. Anaylli raised it over her head, just as it began to look as if Madelyne were about to stir. Havok himself stirred, and Callisto whipped out one of her patented knives and held it to his throat.

"You gotta trust me, Summers! Believe me, this is what's best for the lady!

"But one last thing, too…" She looked intently at her target. "For my codename, the 'Locks considered the sound my stave made upon contact with basically anything, and they rearranged the letters of my foster father's handle, Masque…to hereby make me…

And then, the citrine-haired club-wielder brought down her weapon with deliberation onto Madelyne's head.

(SMAQUE) "_…SMAQUE._"

After a couple of seconds, Lorna hazarded a look from between her hands. She squinted to see the shape of Madelyne still immaculate, face, scalp and all still intact.

And the sister now known to Havok and Polaris as Smaque breathed heavy a second, out of tension from what she thought would happen, then looked up at the couple. "You see?" she said, "I knew that all I needed to use was the pretty stick. L'il Ruby Sue here, all she needed was the stave set to hea…"

(AAAAARRRRRAAAAARGH!)

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

And then the form of Madelyne thrust out an arm whose hand grasped Anaylli hard by the throat, then backhandedly flung the femme far towards another infernal abyss.

Thinking quickly, Callisto like lightning took her knife from Alex's throat and chucked it directly at the jettisoned Russian, the blade striking Smaque directly in the flesh below the top of the girl's right shoulder.

"POLARIS, NOW!"

Crinkling her brow a second, then nodding in understanding, Lorna waved her arms, manipulating the metal in the weapon lodged within Anaylli to move the lady back towards the ledge on which they were all situated.

"I could have just worked with the girl's gravity field, you know," Lorna asided to Callisto, as Smaque settled safely down while Madelyne's body began to stand upright in a very stiff, spooky way. "I was within good ran…"

Then Miss Dane's diction was dashed, unbelievably, by the decommissioned Darkchilde's four right-hand fingers working up and down upon the thumb, as if to simulate a mouth talking too much. This just as Smaque leveled her stave again and tapped herself on the injured shoulder, to make it better. "Yadda, yadda, yadda! We've got a Goblin Queen to quell here, and you're all Lady Chatty-Cheeks!"

"_You insignificant Illyana-shat imp…!"_

The words were spewing from Madam Pryor's mouth, but the inflection was unholy, and Alex recognized it right away. "Maddy, fight it!" the Summers squealed pleadingly. "You can overcome the Queen's influence! Plea…"

"Ahh, fuck it!"

Anaylli chased this last cuss with another stave-strike right into Maddy's Satanic sneer.

(SMAQUE)

And as the scarlet Six-er's svelte shape sprawled to the ground, her devilish semblance, the salmon-skinned spirit possessing her for these past several episodes, floated out of the fair lady's form.

Havok hurled himself to the side of the other woman he adored (other than his perennially-loved Polaris from his own dimension), staying with her to protect her figure from corruption again, or worse. Lorna and Callisto ran to the lip of the ledge as Smaque leapt at the Goblin Queen hovering just beyond the precipice.

The baby blonde babushka threw a thumbs-up back at Polaris as the verdant virago buoyed her up via the girl's gravity field. Anaylli then focused all her attention on Her Demonic Majesty.

"You're in for it now, Oh Terror of the Tetchy Thistle Trousers!" Colossus's cheeky younger sister shouted. "You all went and made me switch settings from the Pretty Stick…to my _damn_ favorite, don't you mistake it…"

The quinging Queen could barely hold up an orange arm as

(SMAQUE)

the stave struck her on the left wrist, causing the demon unbelievable pain.

"…The ILLY CLUB!"

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

Yes, just as Matt Murdock in any universe-iteration had his billyclub, here this mirror-Illyana had her own answer to it, in the offensive flipside to the healing wand her stave was minutes ago. Ledgeside, Lorna was making efforts with her magnetism to manipulate the constitution of the Queen, but she found that the demoness's true form, though seemingly humanid, was of a constitution incomprehensible to the human mind, with no metal, gravity field, or anything else conducive to Polaris's powers to control. Havok, similarly, was striving to find an opening for his plasma blasts…but he suffered at the moment from the same conundrum his older brother Scott always did, insofar as with Smaque's back to him and in the way, Alex was awfully lacking a clear shot at the Goblin goddess.

But…

(SMAQUE SMAQUE SMAQUE)

…it mattered not at all, as Anaylli apparently had the situation in hand. With a rousing rightward swing, she struck with the aforementioned Illy Club, scoring the Queen here in the chest, there in the left arm, there in the right leg, all the while dodging concussive force blasts aerially from her enemy. "Yeah, you're a real demonic diva, you know that?" the girl taunted as she fought on. It appeared she had the Goblin Queen about on the ropes now. "With all your time haunting Earth's surface, you've been disconnected from what it means to be a devil. I bet you even Moley there's more in touch with Hell, with him down here so long, than…"

"_SILENCE, you kobold-kissing Communist!"_

And just like that, the Bolshevik babe-blabbermouth stood suspended in the air, unable to twitch a bit as the Goblin Queen's focused power froze her.

Victory imminent now, the Queen raised both her arms before her opponent, she primed to destroy the roguish Rasputin with a concentrated concussive bolt. _"It's been too long that I've allowed you to live, you Post-Soviet SKANK! This blast of mine will send your Ust-Ordynski ass so far away, you'll see everything from the Cold War to the ICE AGE before your frail frame blows completely apart! I…"_

Then, in the midst of the monstrous mistress's rhetoric, a heavy sensation above distracted her. The Queen found her evil arms seized up in the netting that the Callisto of this reality wore over her torso, the interfering fabric effectively interrupting the enemy's incantation and breaking Anaylli free of her frightful stasis.

Revitalized and renewed in spirit, the Goblin One's opponent leveled her stave. "You talk crap about my country," she said, hefting her Illy Club one more time. "Well, in THIS country we're in right now, they've got a saying…

"An ignorant one, and a mite bit homophobic to boot, so I'll apologize in advance for that…but just to riff on it a second…in certain places, you know, there's sourceresss steers, and there's queeny queers…"

She brought the stave down one last, defining time for the fight now.

(SMAQUE)

A second later the Goblin Queen's form exploded, the protruberances atop her head exploding first with the impact of Anaylli's stick, then the putrid tanned-tangerine face enflaming in a terrible wreath of fire once, twice, thrice…then the rest following in a black haze of smoke.

"…And you ain't got no horns, lady."

The others applauded as Smaque came back on down to the ledge thereafter, the Goblin Threat taken down for good now. This was honestly for the best on all fronts, as now there would be no need for any snot-nosed mini-me Scotty to just point at the Queen and go "Begone!" to serve as the most assheaded anticlimax to this goofy series's first story arc; no need for forced Six Legacy teams in later _Mutant X_ issues, including a most-out-of-place Captain America above all; no need for the virtually gaudy _Gradius_like "boss parade" of Shadow King/Xavier, Mister Sinister, Apocalpyse, effing Dracula and the blatantly-tacked-on Beyonder in episodes to come; no need for…_Mutant X_ generally, actually. And all thanks to this reality's sourceress-shed, saucy savior.

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

Within the coming minutes, the reverse-Illyana would, true to her essence, finish reversing the ill effects of the past hour or two upon a couple of maidens who merited such. The little horned hellion first finished her healing work on Madelyne with the Pretty Stick, then she applied said stave to the charred grill of the girl on whom all the Morlocks relied. In the next few seconds,

(SMAQUE SMAQUE)

Madelyne was her old, peppy, pure self again…and Callisto's face and grace were completely restored.

Minutes later Miss Pryor would approach the sovereign of the sewer-dwellers, wringing her hands in remorse. "I'm so…so sorry about…what my body did…" She was referring to the flaming wreckage that the Goblin Queen wreaked upon Callisto, about another mile upward and still underground. "I wasn't in my own…frame of mind or…"

"I understand." Callisto's face beamed brightly in its renewed beauty. "I know it wasn't you, but the Goblin Queen. It's not a problem; it's all behind us now."

Maddy's tense grit broke into a smile of relief, and the two ladies embraced. Lorna looked on gladly as Anaylli moved behind her.

Then…

(SMAQUE)

…the lady rubbed her shamrock-shaken scalp in shock. "OW! What was _that_ for?!"

"Sorry," said the rowdy Rasputin in turn, as she sheathed her stave in a holster over the shoulder. "Had to be sure that you weren't the bearer of any MALICE…or ill-will otherwise."

The Bolshoi babe, cognizant of monsters in all realities, left the Miss Dane of this dimension to ponder what was meant by that—as of course here, in this universe, she was never overtaken by the mean Malice-ious Marauder.

In the ensuing hours, the reawakened Mole Man and his ginormous goon Giganto (both of whom were given a balmy buffet from the Pretty Stick, in recompense for Smaque's ambush from before) guided Havok, Polaris, and Madelyne to the surface, where the rest of the Six awaited, as well as the pertinacious, poopy-pantsed pipsqueak of a Summers son, interestingly named Scotty. Said son, again as mentioned fleetingly above, was the one who had ended the series's first story arc (and really the only one, what with all the random, bombastic BS that followed), and he ended it majestically and ever so climactically by friggin' _pointing_ to the Goblin Queen and going "Get out of here!"

This was followed, ever so eloquently, by said Queen (who had still resided within Madelyne at the time) screaming, ever so inspiredly, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" And so concluded, at least momentarily, a series of similar screams by almost every character, making the series's first and only story arc sound more like an Adam Sandler comedy CD than a mutant's serious serial (NB: This author will explain said Sandler reference in the Afterword below, if necessary).

No AVX, no Civil War, no possible Machine-Blockbuster-culminating confrontation and conclusion could possibly commence to come close to such an offering by the much-esteemed Man of Mackiechusetts.

But one of the only players in this magnum Machine opus who heretofore had not uttered such a campy cry—at least, not to the pitch and tone level that sadistic Mary Sauces such as Smaque might have liked—was Scotty himself. Wishing to ensure that the tow-headed tyke would not ruin any future story arcs through his lame, literal Power Point, Anaylli waited till the boy's back was turned to all the others, and the Russian revenant rabble-rouser was able to take him aside in private.

"See that star?" the girl said, ever so sweetly as she indicated a distant gaseous form in the astral distance, prompting Scotty to look up with her.

"Yeah?"

"That's where your Uncle Scott is—the one you're named after!"

To be fair, it was true; in this reality, Scott Summers shucked on the same shoes his father Christopher did as Corsair in the mainstream Machine universe—so he was indeed out in space somewhere as Anaylli spoke.

"He's really all the way up there?"

"Yes, Scotty…and…"

The severe stave was out, raised and at the ready.

"…You're gonna go meet him, right now!"

The boy turned just in time to emit that Sandlerian scream as

(SMAQUE)

the horned hoyden drove his twerpy tush into the outer ether with her rod of reckoning, as if Giganto—or Galactus himself—were showing off shamelessly on a golfing outing.

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

In the moments to come, Anaylli would invent the completely palpable parable to Alex and Madelyne: that Scotty grew very sick, as he was infected with that danged techno ailment that almost claimed Nathan Christopher as an infant in 616, and people of this reality, from the future and called the Xclaimani—yes, the vaunted cousins of the Askani—had to usher him further into the epochs to get him cured. Alex bought this outright, as he knew what happened with his nephew.

Madelyne, who bore the precocious, persnickety Scotty from her own loins, just stared at Smaque a second.

Then she shrugged and grinned gamely. "What the hell," she said, "I guess we don't have to worry about asking the school bus driver to divert his route to go past Bannerman Castle now!"

Alex sighed, relaxedly. Then, to Anaylli: "What'll you do now?"

Smaque: "I am bound to infiltrate the estate of the Good Gubna himself, in the near future. I shall proceed under the pretext of working as an advocate for Morlock rights…which is indeed right—although that's not all that's on my agenda.

"The second Señor Mackiechusetts takes me aside, into his private chambers, and corners me, asking if _I'm _legal—a query which has stymied all the aroused ascetics who have pondered my blonde-and-baby-blues biological benefactress's age, throughout the ages—that's when he's gonna inhale my Illy." She shook her stave strenuously at this last.

As with the Xclaimani x-planation, this was good enough for Alex Summers. The man walked between Madelyne and Lorna, ready to place an arm around each. Of course, this left him with his back to Anaylli.

Inevitably, then…:

(SMAQUE)

"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH…!"

The fabulously-follicled heads of Maddy and Lor whisked around in unison, at the launching into the atmosphere of their mutual mutant lover. "Whaaa…?" they sort of said together.

The Ust-Ordynski upstart looked up into the sky as she watched Alex's form flying, flying…then fading into a bleary blink of interdimensional warping. "I sent him back," she said, looking at both ladies alternatingly. "Back to his own reality.

"The truth is…I'm all the fair-haired freedom fighter that is required in this world. When it comes down to it, in the end, I am all the golden-haired good guy you effers need.

"'Cause in this reality, when you're talkin' HEROINE…

THE END

(NEXT ISSUE)

"…You're talkin' SMAQUE!"

AFTERWORD

First of all, Winners don't do drugs. I just couldn't help the heroin/heroine pun at the end here, with Smack/Smaque and all; don't do drugs, anyway. So, then…one aspect of X-Men and other comic books I have noticed over the past twenty years or so is that they can be really, really violent at times. Too violent, I think, at times, although that is really up to opinion (which I will go into below). As I have said before, the purpose of many of my stories here is to heal something, or set it right; one moment in _Mutant X_ Issue 9 which really bothered me—which also goes hand in hand with what I just said about the whole violence thing—was this moment in which a Goblin-Queen-possessed Madelyne Pryor burns horribly the face of Callisto, who has been known to have facial disfigurement, and here in _Mutant X_ at first she is beautiful and everything, so it is sort of expected for something like this to happen to her because of it…but still. I just hated seeing that happen to Callisto, especially as she does get a bad deal facewise and stuff all the time. So this story has one purpose in healing that up; I could honestly write so many other stories in which there is glamorized, stylized violence that has happened, and it really bothers me (such as how Magneto kills that one Russian soldier Semanyov in UXM 275; how Mystique kills Jacob Reisz (a shell body for the Shadow King) in X-Factor 69, I believe it is; just how graphically Goblin Queen in the mainstream universe transforms Jean's parents during Inferno; and so on).

I am just not cool with that level of violence and how glamorized it is. Beyond the specifics of healing Callisto here, this story is also a polemic against the stylized violence in general, and my own solution to graphic violence, which I call "slapstick violence" (which is probably already a term…just sayin' and stuff). This story literally has slapstick violence all over, with Smaque's M.O. You could say I really "beat the reader over the head" with it, in fact, I suppose, in a literal sense almost. Just kind of a fun violence that does not leave a bad taste in the reader's mouth and stuff. I know the Goblin Queen here kind of met a fiery fate, but it was in response to what happened to Callisto; also, as stated in the story, in _Mutant X_ the Goblin Queen and Madelyne Pryor are actually two separate beings, as in this universe the Goblin Queen has horns and orange skin and stuff, and she actually enters Maddy's body at times. I understand that there are at least two problems with regulating violence in any medium. One issue is that of subjectivity; everyone can draw the line at a different place as to what goes too far. Another problem is censorship; of course, if we started regulating violence now, after there has been a rampant run of it in all ways all these years, more than a few people would have some problem with it. All I'm saying is that for the most part (if not for the entire part), violence just seems to go a bit far in stories these days).

Another thing with this story is that I kind of had another "Mary Sauce" character come through here in Anaylli/Smaque, as I had Maddy be the Sauce in my Maddy Sues story. This is also something I have a hangup about, sort of; I am down with female hero(ine) empowerment…it's just that I feel that some have become too mean-spirited in their empowerment to be likeable anymore. Hope Summers IMO is completely insufferable, and not likeable at all, as I've hinted in a number of my stories here; and dare I say it, I even feel that Bendis's Jean is a bit like that also (Teen Jean). I can understand that she had gone through a traumatic time around All New Issue 5 with seeing her future, and I can buy "Leave me the hell alone" at the very end of All New Issue 5 because of it; however, I have trouble finding it believable that she would have become as overbearing a telepath as she was around All New 6-10 or so (as I expressed in my Quesadilla story, if you can get through it…by the way, the Quesadilla himself is supposed to be Joe Quesada, Lowely is Nick Lowe, etc). I also find it hard to believe that she would call anyone, Future Jean or otherwise, a "bitch" and everything. I don't need/want her or any other female hero(ine) to be a sweetheart or total Mary Sue; at the same time, though, I just don't see why female hero(ines) have to be so goddamn aggressive to the point that there's no likeability to them at all anymore. Seeing Boom Boom in a recent issue of Cable and the X-Force, with her having _such_ a sardonic expression on her face that it looks as if she inhaled a grapefruit and still has it stuck in her sinus cavity, just turns me off to such a character. And don't get me wrong, there are male characters who have turned me off of late too, or within the last couple of years, such as present day Beast with his arrogance, Cyclops at times with his own arrogance and douchiness, and so on.

The reason why I chose Illyana (or a pseudo-Illyana) for this story also was sort of free-associative: Madelyne was a major female character in Inferno, and of course so was Illyana, and Madelyne is in _Mutant X_; the Morlocks and Mole Man are underground folks physically, and Illyana does the "underground" thing spiritually with the underworld; Illyana's a good, spooky character in the mainstream right now with the latest incarnation of Uncanny X-Men…I just felt she fit so well for this story because of all those things. The whole "The End/Next Issue" thing is just a dig against Howard Mackie, the "Governor of Mackiechusetts" here, as the writer like every other issue put "The End" at the end of an issue…almost as if to connote that a story arc was finished…BUT it was still going on, usually. I have always seen either "Next: _" or simply an "X" symbol at the end of an issue otherwise, or anything other than "The End" unless "The End," again, connotes the end of a story arc. Literally, Mackie had trouble ending his issues (figuratively he did as well). On the whole, Mackie is an okay writer, but nothing amazing, and he does not come anywhere CLOSE to the way Claremont was back in the Eighties with Inferno (I do not swear by Claremont unflinchingly; I am just saying here). For Mackie to have made a series through _Mutant X_ which is kind of a spiritual successor to Inferno, what with Alex and Maddy/Goblin Queen front and center, and NOT to have any of the viscerality of Inferno in the _Mutant X_ issues, or even FLASHBACKS to it (the flashback I had in this story to the transformed Empire State Building and the ledge on which Alex and Maddy were in a semi-embrace, which is a reference to UXM 242, could have been one such flashback…but there are NO such flashbacks in _Mutant X_ at all)…it's just remiss on Mackie's part. To say nothing about the art in _Mutant X_ which lacks the visceral nature of what was in Inferno and so on and so forth. There are a trillion other issues I had with Mackie's series, but I will stop here or go on forever.

Oh, one more thing, though: the Adam Sandler thing is from one of his comedy CDs from the 1990s, called They're All Gonna Laugh At You! There is a track called "Oh, mom," in which a scarily uptight mother keeps going "NOOOOOOOOOO!" and "They're all gonna laugh at you!" over and over every time someone in her family suggests something really innocent, like going out for ice cream or whatever. I believe it's a Carrie reference (Stephen King), and Carrie has just been remade actually for theatres now, at least in the USA, so they might have that line ("…laugh at you") there also in the remade version as well. The Sandler bit did not age well, and I just cringed through it last night while finishing this story…it's a reference to how in Mackie's series here, every five seconds, especially around _Mutant X_ Issues like 6 to 11 or 12 or so, every character ends up going "NOOOOOOOOOO!" at some point. Check it out and you'll see; it's the bestest writing ever, really!

Speaking of going on and on, though, as I did a second ago: this story here is the last I will do this year, for X-Men stuff anyway. Next year I am looking to do at least a couple more, and I may do a few more the following year as well…I just want to get around each year to doing a bit of a number of things. I'd like to do some original writing soon, specifically, as well. To those who have read a lot of my stories here, I thank you, thanks so much; it would be great to hear from you, positive, negative, neutral comments, whatever, either through a review on here or via private message. I AM looking to do that Mega-Madelyne story I promised, soon, but because I wanted to research it a bit more, and because I'm a bit tired from all the stories I've done lately, I'm taking a bit of a break first. I am hoping to do the Mega-Madelyne in January or February or so of next year. Till then, I hope you all have a nice holiday season from Halloween to New Year's, and I will strike again on the X-Front again in the coming months.


End file.
